5 Best Colleges for Media Professionals

Why do people go to college? Well, in addition to all of the people around them — parents, teachers, friends, and other loved ones — telling them it’s what they are “supposed” to do, people also go to college because it can help them land a better job, and of course, earn a higher paycheck. In 2013, typical bachelor’s degree holders earned $457 more each week than those with only a high school diploma. This adds up to nearly $2,000 per month, which is more than enough to make a house payment in most areas.

Are you in the process of choosing the right school? If not, maybe someone close to you is? As a $40,000 (or more) investment, school choice is something most people take very seriously. It’s not just about which institution signs your diploma, it’s more than that. Where do you want to earn your education, graduate from, and be an alumni?

LinkedIn recently performed an analysis of the top colleges and universities for various professions, determining the best school choices for a person who wants a career in finance, accounting, software development, and other areas. Since certain media professionals — like social media managers, strategists, and other online communications positions — have been growing so rapidly in recent years, we’ve used LinkedIn’s data to create a list of the best colleges for media professionals.

LinkedIn determined these schools by finding the top companies media professionals are choosing to work, and where these professional went to school. For each school, LinkedIn found the percentage of alumni from each school who ended up landing jobs at these big companies. Those with the highest percentages earned a spot on this top five list.

Source: Northwestern University via Facebook

Northwestern University

Northwestern has over 118,000 alumni on LinkedIn, which provided the social media site a plethora of data. Nearly 11,500 of these alumni work in media and communications positions, ranging from social media experts to news reporters to television produces. Northwestern alumni work for companies like Google, Bloomberg LP, The New York Times, and Thomson Reuters.

Source: Howard University via Facebook

Howard University

There are close to 50,000 Howard alumni on the social media site LinkedIn, and around 3,200 of them work in media and communications. Howard alumni work at companies like ESPN, NBC, CNN, and The Washington Post. Some of their jobs titles include broadcast journalists, graphic designers, and television producers.

Source: Duke University via Facebook

Duke University

Close to 82,000 Duke alumni are on LinkedIn. These professionals work for well-known companies like Google, NBC, and The Huffington Post. Around 3,700 Duke alumni from the LinkedIn site work in media and communications professions. TODAY show producer Matt Greenfield is a Duke alumni, but his major was psychology.

Source: Hofstra University via Facebook

Hofstra University

Hofstra alumni on LinkedIn work for some of the major television networks like ABC and NBC, and some even work for the media giant Viacom. In total, around 54,000 of the site’s users attended this school, and close to 3,900 of them work in media and communications professions.

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New York University

NYU has made it onto several “best schools” lists, and its graduates work for television networks like NBC, large newspapers like The New York Times, and other well-known companies like Google and JPMorgan. It has over 266,000 alumni on the LinkedIn network — more than 27,000 of whom work in media and communications jobs. Movie director Martin Scorsese attended film school at NYU.